Google Photos 2.8 for Android Revamps Albums

Apart from tweaking its Search engine to offer advanced recipes, Google has also made a some minor changes to its Photos app for Android to give it a cleaner look. The update – which brings the app to v2.8 – adds more visual appeal by going for a uniform grid look, especially in the Albums tab. The iOS update will likely follow soon.

Those using the older version of the update will notice that the album cards in the section are rectangular in shape with a full cover image. With Google Photos v2.8 for Android, the app now shows smaller album tiles with cover images in square. This lets two albums sit side by side rather than having to scroll through one album at a time. The title and date of an album are placed below the cover image rather than inside. The change to Google Photos may bring up mixed reactions from users who have grown accustomed to the wide rectangular albums. While the smaller squared tiles will likely help save time when scrolling for a particular album, it also shows off a lot of whitespace than before.

The Albums tab also gets a new ‘Photos on device’ (previously called Device folders) which clubs photos under a specific location in your device’s storage such as ‘Camera’ or ‘Screenshots’. The sections can be scrolled through the carousel from the Albums tab. Previously, the photos were accessed through the navigation drawer. The new section follows the same two column layout as the redesigned Albums tab.

Apart from these, there are hints at which features Google may bring in future versions, as per the APK tear-down performed by Android Police. A new auto-stories feature might show up in an upcoming update that will let you initiate the story-style albums that Google frequently tends to create on its own. The auto-stories will likely create a story on command and may require you to choose some photos to help it begin. Additionally, the Nearby feature that Google introduced last year in June may get incorporated into Google Photos as well as a way to share photos with other although it’s not clear how that would work.

Google Photos learns what’s important to you and then organise your photos based upon that information. The aim is to let you enjoy taking photos without having to worry about trying to organise them all, and if the demo we saw today is any indication, Google has succeeded.